Some filmmakers have put so much effort into their craft and turned out such quality work, that every time a film from them is announced, it’s a celebratory occasion. Even when that film is a Netflix movie. Thus, is the case here, as “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” is written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, also known as The Coen Brothers, the creators of “The Big Lebowski,” “Fargo,” “No Country for Old Men,” “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and “Burn After Reading.”
As always, the script and overall writing is excellent. Just like previous Coen features, the dialogue is ripe with instantly quotable lines and wry dark humor. Even some of the very concepts of the stories within the film, like a super nice guy who’s okay with point blank murdering random people, practically ooze black comedy from their very pores.
However, within the film’s basic concept lies its biggest flaw. When it was originally announced, this wasn’t supposed to be one film. It was originally announced to be a six-part anthology series. Despite being reworked into one film, the six-part nature remains, and it ends up hurting the overall product.
Some stories, like the titular “Ballad of Buster Scruggs” are amusing and ripe with possibilities but are over in less than 10 minutes. Meanwhile others, like “All Gold Canyon” are at the perfect length. Yet some even seem like their equipped to last longer than their short story nature, like “The Gal Who Got Rattled.”
It just ends up throwing cohesiveness out the window for a series of amusing short stories. It begs the question, why stitch it into one film? It doesn’t do anything for the overall film, except make it feel like something’s missing. None of the characters even cross over in any way, and given the film’s overarching theme of death, its easy to see a few simple ways that they could have.
Even with that, the writing is still excellent, and the performances are as well. This is surprising, given the ensemble nature of the piece, but even with so many players, everyone maintains a surprisingly high level of quality.
Tim Blake Nelson ("Holes," "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"), Tom Waits (Seven Psychopaths," "The Book of Eli") and Zoe Kazan ("Ruby Sparks," "The Big Sick") all standout though, even among the rest of the cast’s excellence. Nelson’s bizarrely nice Buster Scruggs is such a fascinating anomaly, and Kazan and Waits deliver such wholesome and lovable performances, bringing their esoteric characters to life.
The decision to push all of these stories into one film does some good though. It allows for some much more somber stories, like “Meal Ticket” to be balanced out by the more cartoony nature of some of the others. However, others like “Near Algodones” just feel pointless in comparison. Not bad, as they’re still fun to watch good actors say good dialogue, but just pointless.
Because look at any of their past films, and it’ll become quite apparent that the Coen brothers can write extremely funny and intricate plots. “The Big Lebowski” was praised for being a film that is about nothing, despite creating tons of different story threads within it. Even with the high quality of the writing within each story, it’s saddening to imagine what more could have been done had this been approached as a full film first, instead of a short series stitched into a film later.
It is possible to look past all of that while watching. Because even with their frustratingly separated nature, the stories that are told, though not all equal, are all so interesting and well executed that any flaws thought of in the moment are easily ignorable.
Which is the struggle when presented with a film like this. Because it really isn’t a film. It’s a collection of six short films, smushed into a two-hour-and-twenty-minute movie. If they were all judged on their own, that would be different. But as it stands, “Buster Scruggs” is an amusingly dark, instantly quotable and flawed good time. 3.5/5
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